Martin Salter was Labour MP for Reading West from 1997 until 2010, when he retired from Parliament. He is Vice Chair (Environment) of the Labour Party and a keen angler.

By abandoning Labour, the preachy Guardian could help the far Right and Islamofascists

Like Will Heaven, I was bemused by the lame reasons given in a recent Guardian editorial for its ditching of Labour. "If the Guardian had a vote in the 2010 General Election," we grateful punters were told, "it would be cast enthusiastically for the Lib Dems." Quite apart from the bizarre concept of extending universal suffrage to newspapers, as if they don't have enough power already, the obvious question for those of us with Leftish inclinations is: why now?

Having been in the vanguard of so many of the moves to see Tony Blair replaced by Gordon Brown, particularly since the Iraq invasion, is it not unreasonable to expect even these privately educated, Leftist dilettantes to stand by their man in his hour of greatest need? The Guardian "proudly" argues that it is the Lib Dem committment to electoral reform that has won them over. Hang on a sweet liberal moment – hasn't this been Lib Dem policy since 1922, when they found themselves in third place behind an emerging Labour Party?

Furthermore, if this volte-face is a position of such great principle, why then does the Guardian appear to be advising its readers to vote against Lib Dem candidates in constituencies where Labour remains best placed to stop the Tory winning? That does not sound hugely principled and certainly lacks a sense of enthusiasm.

While I confess to the occasional purchase, I could never tolerate the Guardian as my regular daily news digest. I may agree with many of the stances it takes, and admire some of its columnists, but at the end of the day it is just too bloody preachy and so bloody pious. The Guardianistas talk about Labour "losing touch" with the people, which is a bit rich coming from the house paper of the metropolitan liberal elite.

These are the same people who would react with horror if, by their actions, they had contributed to the election of BNP candidates in Stoke, Dagenham or Barking or the rise of women-hating Islamofascists in places like Bethnal Green and Bow or Limehouse and Poplar. Well, those of us who have been in the front line against political, racial or cultural extremism and have confronted it in factory and trade union meetings, on council estates and in tenants groups or in mosques, churches and temples – we know the dark side of our communities.

We can tell the Guardian a thing or two about which forces will fill the vacuum if support for Labour collapses in certain areas. There is a flipside to any significant loosening of the traditional political allegiances and, as a veteran of the 1930s told me many years ago, if the working class falls out of love with Labour, there is a substantial section that will fall straight into the arms of the far Right.

From their sneering contempt for people worried by large-scale demographic changes in their areas to their promotion of an agenda of abstract rights which have little bearing on the daily struggles of ordinary people, and now with their last-minute undermining of the most progressive force in British politics, the Guardian may well have succeeded in placing its fingerprints on the future. But it may yet turn out to be a future its writers and readers do not much care for.